Shanghai (Gasgoo)-BYD and Baidu cemented their partnership at BYD's Worldwide Developer Conference on August 9, working together to achieve the volume production of autonomous vehicles over the next three years.

Under the step-up cooperation, the automobile version of Baidu Map will be utilized in BYD-developed cars across entire lineup. In addition, Baidu will provide complete intelligent driving solutions for BYD to output L3 autonomous vehicles. Both parties are gunning for the mass production of autonomous vehicles within three years.

Meanwhile, Baidu has already booked the first batch of the Qin Pro as the tested vehicle for Apollo's autonomous driving demonstration road test. The model is expected to go on sale on September 20.

Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, announced at the conference that Baidu will join BYD’s D++ open ecosystem. Using the platform, app developers can gain access to 66 control rights, 341 sensors and extensive vehicle data relating to BYD's Qin Pro model. Apart from Baidu, the D++ platform has also attracted other partners, such as online security company 360 Security Technology Inc, autonomous driving startup Pony.ai and LiDAR provider RoboSense, etc.

Several months ago, BYD officially became the 100 partner of Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving platform at the launching ceremony of the Apollo 2.5 version. In July, Baidu claimed that it will team up with BYD to jointly build the Apollo open vehicle certification platform.